Yes, I'm glad you can finally see behind the facade I put up so that when I'm drinking with the Legionaires and Legionettes I can hold my own in machismo. Deep inside I am a sensitive soul, one who cries when he very inadvertently steps upon an ant or sees a dead skunk along the highway. In truth, whenever I see such as thing as the latter, no matter how old it might be I always stop and offer a prayer or two and then, sorrowing, bury it and put a little marker on the grave with a sentiment such as this:

RIP A Skunk Loved By Its Family And Friends Struck Down In Its Prime By A Careless Driver "It Lived To A Ripe Age" Memento Mori.

Every month I have a Requiem Solemn High Mass read for all of the bacteria and others of God's Creatures I may have inadvertently killed. Sure, it's expensive to rent the cathedral, hire the mourners, pay the organist's fees, and find a priest who can say the Mass in Latin, but it's worth it.

I will even stop and water a plant as I walk through a park or in the woods or hills so that it will be assured enough hydration to survive.

Well, I am sure that I am not the only one taken in and duped by that gentle soul's cloud of persiflage, pretending to be a weapons-obsessed keeper of guns, swords and killing knives, and posing as a chest-beating militant weapons-mad machismo nutball. It could have fooled anyone!

Oh, Rapaire!! I have misjudged you so!! Somehow, all those posts you have written over the years about hunting folks down, and semi-auto weapons and calibres, and inventories of devices meant for wreaking havoc on others' bodies, and defending, and so on, all just completely misled me. I am so glad to see the True You instead!!!

Dear Amos: I'm not in that picture. Those are all the Supervisors from my Library, but it does not include me. That is because I am quiet, a lover of peace, a simple man who tries to lead a simple, quiet life. Indeed, many is the time someone has said to me, "You're simple, aren't you?" and I had to agree that I was. No, that picture doesn't include me, nor was I standing downrange holding the target.

Well, I do too. It's something I have in common with Chongo, I guess. That and the Tommy Gun, but I use mine for hunting rabbits. Just one of the rabbits out this way will feed a family of six for a whole winter.

I'm not sure we can be sure. Ol' man Heisenberg (a surname which always reminds me of beer -- "Hey, barkeep! Gimme a Heisenberg." "I'm not sure we have any, but then again we might. It depends on how fast it flows outa the spigot.") could be getting his licks in.

Well, that might be fine back in the East, back where there's high humidity. Out here we're lucky to see 17% humidity, so when we finish we just leave it out for a while and stroll on about our business. Evaporation is quite rapid and it adds a drop of moisture to the air.

There's a way to avoid that "last drop" problem, Amos. What you have to do is stand there with your willy out and wait for about 15 to 20 minutes. The last drop will eventually evaporate. Problem solved.

You can, of course, speed up the process by blotting it out with some kleenex.

Or you can do what I do. Pack a battery-powered mini-hair dryer in a pack on your back. After having relieved yourself at the urinal you blot with kleenex, then blow off your willy vigorously with the hair dryer. This will result in the offending "last drop" being evaporated in jig time...figure considerably less than a minute. This is for men on the go, men whose time is valuable, men who cannot spare the delay of standing around for 15 to 20 minutes in a public (or private) washroom with their willy hanging out.

ANyone who is not losing his short term memory can see that the referent is your earlier post where you described your contact with Gluon's glulets as a wet feeling (that was not blood) on your leg. I remind you of the time honored couplet on this syndrome:

No matter how much you shake and dance The very last drop goes down your pants.

IF we DID name and measure 'em they'd probably die before they were born or sompn . And if they survived they'd probably end up being entangled and not admitting it until they were in their teens in duckdog years, and gawd knows when that would be.

Near rhyme: Where the rhyme repeats, the sound is close but not exactly the same (given the varieties of dialect, this is probably typical of even most "perfect" rhymes in English).

Will't please you sit and look at her? I said "Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read Strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance, But to myself they turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)...

from "My Last Duchess," Robert Browning (1842)

The first two lines of the clip are perfect rhymes. The second pair are near. The third pair are nearer.

Friend, your fugue taxes the finger Learning it once, who would lose it? Yet all the while a misgiving will linger, Truth's golden o'er us although we refuse it- Nature, thro' cobwebs we string her.

from "Memorabilia," Robert Browning (1896)

"Linger" and "string her" are a near rhyme. "Lose it" and "refuse it" might be in some dialects.

So we'll go no more a roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright....

from "So We'll go no more a roving," Lord Byron, 1817

"Roving" and "loving," in 1817, may have been exact rhyme but we don't have any direct means of finding out. Now, outside of Liverpool, they're near, though some may argue strictly for their being consonant rhyme.

She'd the brooch I had bought And the necklace and sash on, And her heart, as I thought, Was alive to my passion; And she'd done up her hair in the style that the Empress had brought into fashion.

from "Atalanta in Camden Town," Lewis Carroll (1869)

"Sash on" and "passion" are a fine near rhyme.

Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant! Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore, And thus for wider carnage taught to pant, Transferr'd to gorge upon a sister shore...

We could name them Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top and Bottom if there were enough of them. Has anyone figured out a way to count them? And--I blush to ask, but it should be knwon--are they...um...entangled?